Of Oaths and Omelettes
by Subtlynice
Summary: In which Scarlet and Wolf share an omelette and discuss their future. Set three weeks after the future defeat of the Lunar Queen Levana. Oneshot.


**Of Oaths and Omelettes**

The trouble with palaces, Scarlet decided, was that they were far too large and clean to be truly comfortable.

She tossed and turned in her enormous bed, eventually flipping onto her back to blink up at the ceiling, which stretched far higher than the ceilings in her grandma's cottage, and was lavishly decorated with a swirling dark blue and gold floral fresco. Even the _ceilings_ were ornate here.

Scarlet supposed she shouldn't be so ungrateful. If she'd had to endure another night in the same cramped quarters as Cinder, Thorne, Cress, Winter and Wolf – not to mention the annoyingly chatty android living in the ship's auto-control system – she'd have surely lost her mind. And since their defeat of the Lunar Queen – no, the _usurper_ – Levana, Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth had seen to it that Cinder and her friends were waited on hand and foot. (Thorne was the only one among them who didn't seem uncomfortable with being treated like royalty; in fact, he kept announcing to anyone who would listen that he ought to have been given his own rooms in the palace years ago.)

Still, her bed was too comfortable, her stomach was too full and no matter how many androids she counted angrily in her head, sleep evaded her.

If she was being honest with herself, she did sort of miss having her friends so close by. Especially a certain ex-soldier. Oh, they'd driven each other crazy, but it had been comforting and familiar and even a little bit romantic spending every minute of every day together. She'd known it would end eventually, but she'd always assumed that they'd go back to France as soon as Cinder had reclaimed her throne. Of course, she should have known that things wouldn't settle down instantly. Cinder still needed them, and Wolf was determined to stay by his new Queen's side. Scarlet wouldn't dream of leaving now either, but it didn't keep her from feeling homesick. She longed for the outdoors, for the comfort of a tiny cottage surrounded on all sides by acres of farmland.

If only this palace wasn't so unnaturally _huge_.

She kicked back her blankets. Wallowing in bed feeling sorry for herself wasn't going to achieve anything. If she couldn't sleep, she'd find another way to keep her mind occupied and maybe tire herself out in the process.

Emperor Kaito – or Kai, as he insisted on being called – had given them free reign of his palace, but Scarlet still felt like an intruder as she crept through the elaborately furnished corridors late at night. She passed guards who stood so still that they might have been statues. None of them tried to stop her, or ask where she was headed. Perhaps she wasn't the only guest suffering from insomnia – she knew that Cinder had hardly slept in the days leading up to her announcement to the world that she was reclaiming her throne.

Her belly still ached from all the food she'd eaten at supper – Kai's chefs were excellent and after months of canned food she found it hard to remind herself to stop eating after she was full – yet Scarlet found herself wandering in the direction of the kitchens. Cooking had always relaxed her in the past, and although the palace kitchens were a far cry from her grandma's cluttered, wood-furnished kitchen, she felt more at home there than anywhere else in New Beijing.

But just as she turned the corner to the final corridor leading down to the Emperor's kitchens, she heard a loud clatter that caused her to jump backwards in alarm, heart pounding. She glanced back in the direction she'd come, but no guards came running, and she was still unused to trusting authority. If there was an intruder up ahead, she'd deal with them alone. She rolled up her pyjama sleeves, wishing she'd thought to put on a robe, and crept forward silently.

But as she tip-toed towards the half-open door to the main kitchens, she heard more noise. Whoever was stealing from the palace kitchens in the dead of night, they weren't trying very hard to be quiet about it. She peered in and instantly relaxed.

A hulking figure stood in the shadows of the far corner, rummaging through the tallest cupboards. Scarlet didn't make a noise, but the midnight thief seemed to sense her anyway, because he froze as soon as she stepped across the threshold. He spun around, one hand still clutching a tin of baked beans. Half a carrot dangled from his mouth. He looked surprised to see her, and a little bit guilty, and Scarlet couldn't help but grin.

"Midnight snack?" she asked as Wolf recovered and shoved the rest of the carrot into his mouth, nodding sheepishly. She wasn't really surprised. She'd come to discover a lot of things about Wolf in the last few months – one being that his stomach was a bottomless pit and he really loved attempting to fill it.

"Sorry if I scared you," she said, moving closer. She leaned against the stainless steel countertop. "You couldn't sleep either?"

He shrugged, fingers tapping absently on the side of the bean tin. His skill in the kitchen had come a long way, thanks to endless hours on the ship with nothing to do but whittle away time in the kitchen, but there had only been so much Scarlet could teach him with the food supplies they had. Mostly, he knew how to open a can and heat up whatever was inside.

"You want me to cook you something?" she asked now, eyeing the bean tin. "I was going to cook anyway, but I'm still full from dinner. Someone might as well eat it."

Wolf hesitated. "You don't have to…" he started, but his eyes gleamed eagerly.

"Sit down," she ordered, brandishing a plastic spatula.

He sat quickly, a small smile on his lips. "Yes, ma'am."

She stepped past him to rummage through a fridge so large it would have taken up a whole wall in her grand-mère's kitchen. The best part of living in New Beijing, in Scarlet's opinion, was definitely the fast and easy access to mouth-wateringly good food. It would be hard to go back to Rieux, where if you wanted a good meal, you had to grow all the ingredients yourself.

She threw bags of fresh vegetables on the counter and then grinned up at Wolf. "Eggs!" she said gleefully. "Tell me, when was the last time you had an omelette?"

"Omelette?"

Scarlet's eyes gleamed at the sight of his cluelessness. "Oh, you're in for a treat."

She felt Wolf's eyes on her as she started gathering more supplies.

"Mushrooms? Peppers? Olives? Sweetcorn?" she asked, holding up the bags one by one. He just shrugged. Scarlet washed them all and began chopping.

"So," she said as she worked, increasingly aware that their conversation so far had been mostly one-sided. "I know why I can't sleep. You want to tell me what's on _your_ mind?"

Wolf slid the bean tin back and forth across the counter absent-mindedly. "Just restless, I guess," he mumbled.

Scarlet stopped chopping and gave him an incredulous look. Wolf leaned back with a sigh.

"Maybe I'm finding it hard to believe that all the running and fighting is really over," he admitted. His eyes darted sideways as though watching for people hidden in the shadows and Scarlet knew there was more.

"It's Kai, isn't it?" she asked.

"You know me. It's not that I don't trust the Emperor. I just –"

"Don't know him," she finished, cracking open the eggs. She understood. She was only slightly less paranoid than he was, and even after three weeks, she still treated strangers in Kai's court with suspicion.

Wolf nodded. "But Cinder trusts him, and I trust Cinder. For now, that's good enough for me." His voice was firm and Scarlet couldn't help but smile at his absolute loyalty to his new Queen. He lowered his voice. "I don't like this place, though. It's too…"

"Massive? Gargantuan? Humungous?"

Wolf smiled. "I was going to say confining, actually. I miss the outdoors."

"Oh." Scarlet looked away and busied herself with beating the eggs. This was the perfect opportunity she'd been waiting for. What better time than now to bring up the subject of returning to France? But she was silent for too long, and Wolf awkwardly cleared his throat. "Anything I can help with?" he gestured to the chopped vegetables.

Scarlet let him toss the egg, vegetable and cheese mixture into a pan and patiently guided him through the final process, laughing as his attempted omelette flip went disastrously wrong. Two new batches of omelette mix later they sat on a countertop at the far end of the kitchen, surveying the mess they'd made with sleepy amusement as they dug into one perfectly round omelette.

"As much as I love New Beijing cuisine, I still don't think the vegetables taste quite as good here as they do back home. It's probably the city fumes," Scarlet mused as she chewed a mushroom.

Wolf shrugged, inhaling a significantly larger portion. "Tastes good enough to me."

"That's because you've never tried a European omelette. I'll make you another one when we return to France," she promised without thinking.

Wolf froze mid-chew.

"I mean, not that I'm assuming…" she trailed off, not knowing what to say. "Of course, you can go anywhere now. Back to Luna, even."

He gulped. "Yeah. I mean, I guess. I could."

"And you should. You belong there. I'm sure Cinder is in need of a new guard… you could get a great position in her court up there."

"She might have made me an offer," he admitted sheepishly.

Scarlet felt as though the half-digested omelette in her stomach had turned to ice. "That's great," she said weakly. The awkwardness between them felt as palpable as a third person.

"But…" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance sideways at her. He scratched nervously at the back of his neck as the next words tumbled out. "I haven't really belonged up there – or anywhere – for years. Even if I went back, I'm not sure there'd be anyone but Cinder there for me, and she needs plenty of supporters and emissaries on earth, too. People to clean up Levana's messes."

Scarlet risked another glance at him. His expression was wary but earnest. She tried to imagine Wolf – her distrustful, bad-tempered, restless Wolf – as an emissary. Travelling from one continent to another for Cinder. Honestly, it wasn't too hard. He was well-spoken, he'd gotten a lot better at public interaction, and there was no one better to speak on Cinder's behalf than one of them. He'd be a breath of fresh air amongst all the liars and suck-ups. And it was a lot easier than imagining him cooped up in another palace, playing guard-dog.

"Well," she said cautiously, "If you're going to be travelling a lot, you'll need someplace permanent to come back to."

He nodded. A tentative half-smile appeared.

"And the cottage in Rieux is small, but it's surrounded by farmland. I don't think you'd find it so constricting." She paused. "You know, if you want –"

"I want that," he said quickly. "I just… I wasn't sure what you wanted. If you still want me around..."

"I want that," she said. She reached for his hand. "Besides, you need to stay close to your alpha female, remember?"

Wolf grinned. "Exactly." He leaned down for a long, languid kiss, resting his forehead against hers when they parted. "I used to believe I'd be a soldier for the rest of my life. Now I don't know where I'll end up or what I'll end up doing. All I know is that I want you there. So if you go back to France, I'm going with you."

Scarlet smiled slyly. "Still interested in that farmhand job? Because I think we've got a few openings now."

"Yes ma'am," he said again, smirking at her with a half-smile she'd grown to love, and she couldn't resist tugging him back down to press her lips to his.


End file.
